~ An Act of Kindness ~

​​Up until that moment, it had never occurred to me that Venice might one day become a target of the jihadists. The likes of Paris and Istanbul and Cairo I could understand; they were major cities with vast populations, on whose governments the jihadists could exact their revenge. Venice, on the other hand, seemed to exist in a different world, a world far removed from terrorist attacks. All that La Serenissima, the benign city, had to offer was tourists.Which turned out to be the point for the jihadists. Because there they were, rampaging through the Europa & Regina, my favourite Venetian hotel, and murdering every tourist they came across. And I happened to be a guest of the hotel that day, another tourist, enjoying a pre-lunch drink at the bar when the attack began. Because the first shouts and shots and screams came from the direction of the reception area, I presumed the attackers had entered the hotel by its rear door. Now they seemed to have fanned out and to be proceeding through the series of ornate ground floor lounges, systematically killing as they went, on their way to the front entrance landing on the Grand Canal. The bar lay in their path.The long, narrow bar led to a small balcony overlooking the Grand Canal, where one could sit of an evening and watch the world go by. The balcony was an escape route, of course, but the attack occurred so swiftly that neither I nor any of the other people in the bar had time to even consider escape. We all – the barman, the waiter and the handful of customers – simply obeyed the single instruction that was being shouted by the assailants. “Lie down!” they screamed over and over again as they moved forward.So, like the others, I lay belly-down on the floor, my eyes shut tight in fear, waiting for death to approach. We listened as the bursts of gunfire, followed immediately by cries of “Allahu Akbar!”, grew louder. Save for the soft whimpering of one lady, we all kept quiet – and very still. By doing that, perhaps we hoped the killers wouldn’t see or hear us and would pass us by.I was as scared as everyone else, but I was also remarkably calm. Calm enough to carry out a quick résumé of my life now that it was about to end. I was well into my sixties by then, and I had done a lot and seen a lot during those years. I had married twice. I had three children, two grandchildren and a clutch of siblings. So I wasn’t alone in the world, but I felt alone. Two years earlier, I had lost my second wife to cancer. Abi had been my soulmate, and I still missed her very much. We had travelled the world together – or what parts of the world we wanted to see. And it was in her memory that I had come to visit Venice again, to make a pilgrimage to the city we both loved most. It had taken me all the months since her death to pluck up the courage to do so – and there I was that day in the wrong place at the wrong time.We had stayed in Venice many times over the years, sometimes for just a few days, but mostly for at least a fortnight. One year, we lived there like Venetians for a whole six months; that adventure felt so long ago now. For this latest visit, which I reckoned would be my last, I had chosen the Europa & Regina. We had spent a glorious two weeks at the hotel one summer, and I wanted somehow to recreate that time. I had even managed to book the same room, the one with the enormous balcony that gave such a wonderful view across the Grand Canal to the Santa Maria della Salute. The very balcony that appeared some years later in the movie, The Talented Mr Ripley. How we had laughed when we saw that. We laughed even more when our regular hotel in Paris, Hôtel Régina, cropped up in The Bourne Identity not long afterwards. We used to joke that a Hollywood director was probably following our journeys. Next thing, he would be featuring our veranda room at Raffles in Singapore or our suite on the 30th floor of New York’s Waldorf Astoria. Happy memories!As I lay there, petrified, almost not daring to breathe, it occurred to me that if memories were all I had left, with little to look forward to, I had nothing to lose by seeking something better than being shot in the back by some anonymous murderer. I had lived my life. If it was going to end, I wanted it to end more nobly. I wanted to see my killer’s face, to look him in the eyes. So I sat up. And instantly the terror within me disappeared.Sitting hugging my knees, I watched for movement at the entrance to the bar while the awful sounds of the massacre grew closer. I saw the shadows of the jihadists as they passed by the entrance, shooting and shouting. Then one on his own stepped inside and paused to take in the surroundings before firing into the nearest prone body and crying “Allahu Akbar!” A chequered scarf was wrapped round the jihadist’s head and most of his face, so that only his eyes were visible. An automatic rifle hung from his shoulder. I looked on dispassionately, as if from afar, as he went about his business. I saw and heard the pleading of his victims, the tongues of fire shooting from his rifle, the bullets thudding into flesh, the squirming death throes that followed – and, of course, God being praised after each kill. Then it was my turn.“Lie down!” he ordered.I didn’t flinch. Instead, as I had wanted to do, I stared straight into his eyes.“Do not look at me!” he screamed, raising his rifle and threatening to club me with its butt.I went on staring, and as I did so I suddenly recognised those eyes. They were the same dark, intelligent, mischievous eyes from another time. But there was something else in them now. Excitement, probably. And fear, perhaps.“Do not look at me!” he screamed again.“Why not?” I replied.It must have been twenty or more years before that day. Abi and I were holidaying in Istanbul. We were walking in the late afternoon sunshine, crossing over the Hippodrome, past the Egyptian obelisk and onto the path leading down to our hotel, readying ourselves for the gauntlet of vendors on the narrow street outside the hotel entrance. The Hippodrome was unusually quiet; there seemed to be only us and a little boy coming towards us. The boy was maybe eight or nine years-old. I had seen him a number of times near the hotel, usually accompanying a teenager, a pushy shoeshine boy, who I guessed was his big brother. As he reached us, he produced something out of the large satchel that hung by his side and almost touched the ground.“Wanna buy some postcards, meester?” he said, grinning widely and holding out a cellophane-wrapped package. His dark eyes seemed to sparkle mischievously.“No, thank you,” I gave my stock response and smiled back at him.The grin disappeared. The eyes turned dull. The boy shrugged dejectedly, dropped the package back into his satchel and walked on.Abi and I continued on our way, but stopped and turned when we heard the boy shouting from some distance away. We could see him standing further up the path, looking directly at us. There was a defiant expression on his face and his little fists were clenched by his sides.“Why not?” he repeated emphatically.I was bemused. I hadn’t received a response like that before. And certainly not from someone the size of tuppence. So I signalled to the boy to come back.“Can I have a look, please?” I asked when he returned.The package he handed me was one of those concertina-like packs of postcards showing all the principal tourist sites of Istanbul. Abi and I had stopped sending postcards many years before, so the pack wasn’t of any use to us. But something about the boy’s attitude made me persist.“How much?”“Ten dollar,” the boy answered, still defiantly.“Five,” I offered.The boy’s face brightened up immediately. Those mischievous eyes were shining, almost dancing.“Eight,” he retorted.“Seven. My last offer.”“A deal,” he said excitedly, holding out his tiny hand for me to shake.We shook hands. I paid him the seven dollars. He turned to go, but suddenly remembered the final component of “the deal”. He dug deep into his satchel and came out with a single postcard, which he handed to me.“A geeft for you, meester,” he said, bowing.I bowed in return. Then the boy left, almost skipping with happiness.“You’ve made his day,” Abi remarked as we watched him disappear up the path.“Yeah,” I nodded. “Seven dollars. Not bad for one sale, I suppose.”Abi shook her head and took me by the arm. “Oh, Brian, you always miss so much,” she laughed. “It’s not about the money. He’s delighted because you haggled with him. You treated him like an adult.”I laughed as well. Abi was always right. As we walked on, I could picture the little fella going in search of his big brother so that he could brag to him.I was certain that the gunman whose rifle butt was poised to come crashing down on my head was the same postcard boy turned angry avenger.“Why not?” I asked again.I could detect a momentary hesitation, a flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes. Although I had grown greyer and stouter over the twenty years, I, too, had the same eyes as on that afternoon at the Hippodrome. I was sure he recognised them. But before he could make his next move, what sounded like a small war suddenly erupted at the front of the hotel. An ear-splitting, continuous hail of gunfire that seemed to come from the direction of the Grand Canal was accompanied by much shouting of “Allahu Akbar!” on the hotel’s landing. The gunman took one last look at me and then fled the bar to join his comrades for their collective final sacrifice.On that day in Venice, there were simultaneous terrorist attacks on the Danieli, the Gritti Palace and the Europa & Regina, all American-owned hotels. More than fifty tourists and hotel staff were murdered in the attacks. All the jihadists who took part in them, including my Turkish postcard vendor, were killed by the Carabinieri.As for me, I’m still convinced that my life was spared because of a little act of kindness some twenty years earlier. The lives of the barman and the waiter, who were next in line for execution, were spared into the bargain. The incident gave me a new sense of purpose, a new mission during my remaining years. Ever since, I’ve spent my time encouraging people to go out of their way to carry out their own acts of kindness in the hope that the world might – just might – become a better place.